The Streisand effect and the UK ban on Palestine Action

08 Aug, 2025

In 2003, singer Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman for US$50 million to have an aerial photograph of her Malibu mansion removed from his publicly available California Coastal Records Project documenting coastal erosion. Before the lawsuit, which Streisand lost, the photo had been downloaded only six times, of which two by Streisand's attorneys. However, after the lawsuit was filed the photo was viewed 420,000 times in the following month. The episode inspired Mike Masnik to coin the expression "Streisand effect"  to denote

a phenomenon whereby the attempt to suppress something only brings more attention or notoriety to it.

Somebody should have brought that to the attention of the UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper when she took the decision to designate the campaign group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, on a par with Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

Palestine Actions' acts and aims do not fall under best-practice standard definitions of terrorism. According to this BBC article: 'The group's website states it is a "direct action movement" that uses "disruptive tactics" to target those who support Israel's military campaign.' Palestine Action has routinely targeted defence companies and especially UK factories of Elbit Systems, Israel's largest arms manufacturer. The ban was introduced two weeks after some of the group's activists broke into an RAF base and sprayed two military planes with red paint.

UN experts and UK lawyers had warned the government that proscribing the group would conflate the right to protest and terrorism, and constitute a dangerous precedent, as well as a threat to civil liberties. They had also expressed the concern that enforcing and policing the ban would create "... a disproportionate strain on police resource and an .... unjustified burden on the justice system..." as well as have "... a chilling effect on political protest and advocacy generally in relation to defending human rights in Palestine.” Under the Terrorism Act 2000, expressing "an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation" constitutes an offence punishable with up to 14 years. Even only wearing, carrying or displaying publicly an item arising suspicion of support carries a conviction of up to 6 months and a maximum unlimited fine.

The government chose to ignore the warnings and ... opened the floodgates to the Streisand effect.

Within a day from the ban becoming effective on 5 July the police arrested 29 people for protesting against the ban. In subsequent weeks, newspapers and news sites have reported about the ban nearly every day, exposing highly disturbing cases. They go from the arrests of an 83-year-old reverend, an 81-year-old former-magistrate and OBE and a disabled person to the 27-hour arrest and house search of an 80-year-old retired teacher and, hilariously, the arrest of a man for holding an old Private Eye cartoon. As of today, more than 200 peaceful protesters taking part in the weekly demonstrations have been arrested across the country. The Guardian too has tested the boundaries of the legislation with a cartoon, while more than 300 prominent Jewish figures have signed a letter denouncing the proscription as "illegittimate and unetical". Finally, 52 leading global scholars have signed an open letter provocatively titled 'We support Palestine Action in Their Campaign Against Proscription' expressing their solidarity with "the growing campaign of collective defiance."

The situation is expected to reach a new climax this coming Saturday 9 August when up to 1,000 campaigners from the pressure group Defend Our Juries are expected to stage a demonstration in London in defiance of the the ban. This poses serious logistical challenges as it is estimated that there are only 520 available police cells in London at any one time. In anticipation of this and given that jails in England and Wales are 97.5% full, the Ministry of Justice has initiated emergency measures to maximize the availability of prison cells

This absurd misallocation of resources, when the police, criminal justice and prison systems are already at breaking point, raises awkward questions about the government cost-benefit calculation. This at a time when public opinion is reeling from the images of devastation and mass starvation in Gaza, and when UN officials, human rights groups, as well as genocide scholars concur that Israeli actions amount to genocide. Even former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has stated that Israel has been committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.

The UK is not isolated in resisting characterizing Israeli actions as criminal or genocidal despite the mounting evidence to the contrary. This is understandable given the risk of being accused of complicity in genocide. Yet, the UK is the only European country which has taken the unprecedented step of proscribing a non-violent protest group as a terrorist organisation.

This unseemly pattern of behaviour further feeds the Streisand effect, as the public struggles to make sense of the government conduct on the issue. A quick online search reveals the following.

• Elbit Systems has a track record (e.g. here and here) of lobbying previous governments to influence policing and judicial prosecutions in relationship to Palestine Action.¹ Keir Starmer's government too held secret meetings with Elbit in December 2024.
• The lobby group We believe in Israel² ran a campaign to put pressure on Yvetter Cooper and produced a report demanding the proscription of Palestine Action one month before the enactment of the ban. Elements of Cooper's statement to parliament on 23 June echoed claims in that report.
• 13 out of 25 members of the government have received donations from pro-Israel lobbyists since first being elected to parliament. Among the donors is Labour Friends of Israel whose parliamentary officer, Michael Rubin, was secretly filmed saying LFI and the Israeli embassy “work really closely together, but a lot of it is behind the scenes”.³

Whatever the reality, the optics is not great.

When in a hole stop digging

After one year in power, Keir Starmer's popularity is at an all-time low, particularly among Labour voters. After the debacles on disability and winter-fuel benefits, the failure to meaningfully reduce NHS waiting lists, the controversial Online Safety Act and the spectre of tax increases in the Autumn, people have started to question the government competence. In a recent YouGov poll, Starmer came second only to Liz Truss as the worst English prime minister since 1979. As Neil Kinnock has recently remarked, while Starmer has been focusing on Reform UK the real threat to Labour reelection comes from disaffected voters defecting to the Liberal Democrats, Green, the new Corbyn-Sultana party or abstain. Many Labour core voters, and MPs, are already outraged at Starmer's reluctance to condemn Israel's actions in Gaza beyond empty words and threats. A number of Labour candidates, most famously Jonathan Ashworth, already lost their seats to pro-Gaza independent candidates in the last general election. According to UK top pollster Sir John Curtice, top cabinet ministers, including health secretary Wes Streeting and justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, risk a similar fate at the next election.

Against this background, the decision to proscribe Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000 seems a gratuitous act of political suicide. It elevates a little known group to a powerful symbol of resistance to government attempts to silence protest in support of human rights in Palestine. It antagonises and criminalizes core Labour voters as supporters of a terrorist organization. It exposes the government to the risk of a third U-turn should it lose the judicial review of the ban in November.

These are huge political costs for the government and the Labour party, against the single benefit of a potential reduction in economic damage to Israeli arms factories.

One can't help but wonder about the government objective function.